Herbert West

Herbert West
Aliases:	Doctor Herbert West
Continuity:	Re-Animator
Notability:	Main character
Type:	Mad scientist
Occupation:	Scientist
Gender:	Male
Race:	Human
Location:	Boston, Massachusetts
Associations:	Miskatonic University
Status:	Alive
First:	Herbert West - Re-Animator
Actor:	Jeffrey Combs Josh Cole

Herbert West is a fictional scientist and the anti hero in the 1922 short story "Herbert West - Re-Animator" by author H.P. Lovecraft. The story first appeared in the June, 1922 edition of Weird Tales. The character was adapted for film by director Stuart Gordon in 1985 in the movie Re-Animator, where he was played by actor Jeffrey Combs. Combs reprised the role of Herbert West for the 1990 direct-to-video sequel, Bride of Re-Animator as well as the 2003 movie Beyond Re-Animator. Additionally, the character has also appeared in comic book format (based upon the film version of the character, not the short story version) published Adventure Comics (an imprint of Malibu Comics) and later by Dynamite Entertainment.

Biography

Herbert West attended school at the University of Zurich. It was here that he first developed his theories on cellular reanimation. He created a serum, which came to be known as Re-Agent and experimented on one of the staff members named Doctor Gruber. How West chose to select Gruber as his test subject is unclear, but after giving him an injection of Re-Agent, the man suffered adverse physical trauma. His face became ashen and sunken in and he began screaming in agony.

Doctor Gruber's howls of pain alerted some of the nursing staff as well as two university policemen. They barged into Gruber's office where they found West hovering above the man who was still in the throes of massive pain. Gruber suffered a hemorrhage of some kind that caused his eyes to explode, and he fell down dead. The nurse accused West of killing him, but Herbert denied this, citing, "No I did not! I gave him life".